Recent Posts

Archives

I’m honored that for more than 15 years, I have called Neil Gaiman my friend. Not only is Neil probably the greatest living author of dark fantasy, in my modest opinion, he is one of the most generous and supportive and warm and loyal people on earth. Practically since the day his amazing novel American Gods was first published, in 2001, a legion of fans has been pestering him with questions about the people, the mythology, the places, and the stories in this massive volume. For some time, he’s been very kindly saying something along the lines of “Let’s wait until Les Klinger annotates it.” Well, that time is now! Yes, American Gods is “Project X” that I was teasing about.

I began work on Project X on Saturday, the annotation of a major fantasy novel. I can’t reveal the title yet because the contract is not yet signed. For the last month or so, I’ve been twitchy without a project to work on, so I first spent a few hours, kludging together an electronic text to annotate and then dove in.
My usual process, before beginning to read what others have written about the book, is to re-read the work slowly, dropping in empty footnotes wherever I come across something that I don’t understand or something that will need elucidation. Of course, I immediately started down a tantalizing byway, trying to figure out the geography of the story, measuring distances, and poring over maps to locate suitable airports and towns. Google Earth and the Geographic Names Information System to the rescue!
My wife worried that I was wasting my time–that, with no signed contract, the project might die, and I’d have misspent the day. I pointed out to her that it was grand fun to do this work, even if it ended up in the wastebasket.
And clearly the good karma that must have accrued from starting worked: In my inbox this morning appeared an e-mail from the publisher, providing an official copy of the electronic text on which I could work! So at least the editors there believe we’re moving ahead, signed contract or no! I’ll move over the 45 (45!) notes I already created for the first 3 chapters and get going in earnest!
Watch this space for an official announcement soon! The book is expected to be published in the Fall of 2019.

I turned in the manuscript for my next big annotated volume, Classic American Crime Fiction of the 1920’s, to Pegasus Books back in early January, as promised, and settled back to be bored between books. Then came a shock: At the last minute, the owners of the rights to the Hardy Boys mysteries decided that we couldn’t include The Tower Treasure. Because I’d already done all of the research and annotating and even the proofing, it would be an understatement to say that this was disappointing.

OK, 2017 was a cataclysmic year for disasters and politics, capped by a massive tax bill that required me to study the law like any first-year associate. My personal approach to these cataclysms was to dive into my writing and related activities, and the result was–well, the year is over!

It was that kind of day today. On the “bad news” front, I’m sad to announce that Liveright Publishing/W. W. Norton has delayed publication of my New Annotated H. P. Lovecraft: Beyond the Mythos to Summer 2019. This is partly due to other books in their pipeline and partly because my New Annotated Frankenstein (that they so beautifully published) will still be very much in the public eye during the 2018 bicentennial year. While this delay gives me an opportunity to add some additional great photos to the Lovecraft book (supplied by the tireless Donovan K. Loucks), I had hoped it would be out in late 2018. To all my friends in the Lovecraft community who have so kindly asked when the book would appear–it’s not my fault, but bear with us!

July has been a lovely book-month so far. I just received my author’s copies of the truly gorgeous New Annotated Frankenstein (the official pub date is August 8)–thank you, Liveright/Norton for another amazingly beautiful design! I’m very proud to be doing my first-ever signing at San Diego Comic-Con, from 5 to 6 pm on Friday, July 21, at the Mysterious Galaxy booth, Booth #1119, with pre-release copies of Frankenstein that Norton sent them.

Sara Paretsky was our Distinguished Speaker this year for the Baker Street Irregulars at the Sherlock Holmes Birthday Weekend. She gave a powerful and moving talk about women crime writers who have been forgotten today, despite their achievements and popularity in the 19th and early 20th century. I was inspired by her talk to decide to add another volume to my “In the Shadow of…” series of anthologies, and I was delighted that Pegasus Books wants to bring it out later this year.
Tentatively titled In the Shadow of Agatha Christie, it includes 11 stories by Mrs. Henry Wood, Mary Fortune, Harriet Spofford, Elizabeth Gaskell, Catherine Crowe, M. E. Braddon, C. L. Pirkis, Susan Glaspell, Carolyn Wells, Baroness Orczy, and Augusta Gruner, all very talented crime writers who published before 1920. As in the other books in the series (In the Shadow of Sherlock Holmes, ITS of Dracula, ITS of Edgar Allan Poe), the stories will be lightly annotated, and the volume will include mini-bios of the writers and an introduction that surveys the often-overlooked women of the genre. I’m already deep into it!
Meanwhile, I’m waiting on edits of Annotated Watchmen, still on target for July publication, and New Annotated H. P. Lovecraft: Beyond the Mythos, due out in 2018! Just trying to keep busy!

I swore to myself when I started this website that I wouldn’t post about personal things, because, well, it didn’t seem right. But my wife and I have lost two good friends in the last three weeks, our beloved cat Xander (age at least twenty) and the imp of the perverse, our youngest cat Spike, age 12. We still are blessed with the middle cat, Buffy, who’s about 16 or so, and of course, our devil dog, our Rottweiler baby Jenny, age 5. My wife is in tears as I type this, heartbroken over the sudden death of Spike from cancer and hyperthyroid only three weeks after his big brother, whose passing was slow and dignified as befits an old man. She swears, “No more pets. I can’t do this again.”